Agro-Biodiversity Officer

International Development Enterprises (iDE) is an international NGO dedicated to creating income and livelihood opportunities for poor rural households of Ethiopia through various projects implemented in different parts of the country. Currently, iDE is implementing of the project known as Climate Adaptation and Rural Development (CARD II) funded by the Development Fund of Norway. The Project is being implemented in four woredas (Aleltu & Kimbibit of North and Add’aa & Gimbichu of East Shoa Zones), Oromia Regional State. We are seeking to recruit qualified and experienced personnel for the position specified hereunder. Hence, interested individuals who meet the specified requirements are invited to apply for the job opportunity

Key Responsibilities:

• The incumbent will be responsible for conservation of wild crop relatives and landraces in a dynamic, participatory way, involving farmers who manage the bulk of the country’s indigenous crop genetic resources, and in fact practice in situ conservation as a part of their traditional management strategies. She/ He will be responsible for addressing local circumstances that improve governance over farming systems with market-based approaches, ensuring that biodiversity management needs are factored into each. She/ he will be responsible to create situ gene banks to protect the wild gene pools for teff, durum wheat and pulse crops through four pilot sites. Lessons learnt at the pilot sites will be widely disseminated across regions and up to the federal level for strategic planning work. This will assist in upscaling of the approaches used at the pilot sites, contributing further to the mainstreaming of agrobiodiversity conservation into the national agricultural systems

Duty station: Aleltu, with frequent travels to Project woredas and kebeles.

Required Experience:

•  Proven experience of different bio diversity resources conservation mainly in the areas of:
•  Different local seed conservation (experience in implementation of community based local seed gen bank)
• Different natural resources conservation (Agro forestry, Soil and water conservation….)
• Experience on the agronomic practices of different major field crops like wheat, teff, Barley, chickpea and lentil and on different vegetables, and forage development is preferable
• Production and marketing of different crops improved seed
• Experience in promotion of different irrigation technologies is also preferable

 Educational Background

• MSc degree (preferable) or BSc degree (essential) in the fields of Agro- biodiversity, natural resources management, plant science and related fields
• At least 4 years for MSc and 6 years for BSc of proven direct experience.
• Mature personality, result-oriented, problem-solving attitude and ability to work with little guidance.
• Excellent command of written and spoken English
• Knowledge of the local community’s language (Afan Oromo) is essential